It was long, too long to transcribe here, and its import was terrible to the baronet. It opened with the announcement that the writer was the surgeon of Captain Wynde’s regiment, and that Captain Wynde was a patient under his care. It went on to say that Captain Wynde was the victim of a terrible and incurable disease under which he had been suffering for months, and the surgeon had learned that the poor young man had not written home to his friends the fact of his peril. His disease was a cancer, which was preying upon his vitals. Captain Wynde had been relieved of his regimental duties, and sent up into the hill country, where he now was. The young man’s thoughts by day and night were of his home--his one longing was to see his father before he died. Surgeon Graham went on to say that Captain Wynde could not possibly survive a sea journey; that he could not bear the bracing sea air, nor the fatigues of the overland route, and he would assuredly die on his way home. But, he added, that in the cool and quiet seclusion of his upcountry bungalow, his life could probably be prolonged for some three months. Surgeon Graham concluded his startling letter with a further reference to Captain Wynde’s anxiety to look once more on his father’s face before he died. He said that the poor young man had desired that the letter should not be written to Sir Harold, and that the baronet should be informed of his son’s illness only in the letter which should announce that son’s death. This terrible news was a fearful shock to Sir Harold. His son George, the heir of his name and estates, was dying in a far, foreign land, with a frightful disease, with no relative nor friend about him to smooth his pillow in his last agony, or to wipe the death-damp from his brows. The father sobbed aloud in his agony. “My boy! my poor boy!” he cried, in a broken voice. “My poor dying boy!” “It is very sad,” said Lady Wynde, wondering in her own heart if George Wynde’s death could be made to benefit her pecuniarily. “The surgeon seems a very kind-hearted person, and he says that George has an excellent native nurse, George’s man-servant--” Sir Harold interrupted his wife by a gesture of impatience. “The man is a Hindoo,” he said. “What consolation can he offer George in the hour of his death, when his eyes should rest on a tender, loving face--when his dying hands should grasp the hands of a friend? My poor brave boy! How could I ever consent to his going out to India? All his bright, military genius, all his longings to distinguish himself in the army, must end in an early Indian grave! But he shall not die with not one of his kindred beside him. We must go to him, Octavia. We shall reach him in time.” Sir Harold seized upon his unopened _Times_, and glanced over the advertisements.